📄 Pathogenic human coronavirus infections: causes and consequences of cytokine storm and immunopathology

© 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Human coronaviruses (hCo. Vs) can be divided into low pathogenic and highly pathogenic coronaviruses. The low pathogenic Co. Vs infect the upper respiratory tract and cause mild, cold-like respiratory illness. In contrast, highly pathogenic hCo. Vs such as severe acute respiratory syndrome CoV (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV) predominantly infect lower airways and cause fatal pneumonia. Severe pneumonia caused by pathogenic hCo. Vs is often associated with rapid virus replication, massive inflammatory cell infiltration and elevated pro-inflammatory cytokine/chemokine responses resulting in acute lung injury (ALI), and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Recent studies in experimentally infected animal strongly suggest a crucial role for virus-induced immunopathological events in causing fatal pneumonia after hCoV infections. Here we review the current understanding of how a dysregulated immune response may cause lung immunopathology leading to deleterious clinical manifestations after pathogenic hCoV infections.

keywords 🔗 severe acute (1373) 🔗 highly pathogenic (100) 🔗 distress syndrome (112) 🔗 experimentally infected (47) 🔗 immune response (314) 🔗 virus replication (219) 🔗 respiratory syndrome (2004) 🔗 respiratory tract (344) 🔗 respiratory distress (139) 🔗 acute respiratory (1734)

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